Jan Smuts

Jan Smuts (24 May 1870-11 September 1950) was Prime Minister of South Africa from 3 September 1919 to 30 June 1924 (succeeding Louis Botha and preceding J.B.M. Hertzog) and from 5 September 1939 to 4 June 1948 (succeeding Hertzog and preceding D.F. Malan).

Biography
Jan Smuts was born in Bovenplaats, Cape Colony in 1870, and was a childhood friend of D.F. Malan. He was educated at Stellenbosch and studied at Cambridge University (1891-4) before returning to the Cape in 1895. He moved to the Transvaal and was appointed state attorney in 1898. He became a distinguished leader in the Second Boer War, agreeing with Louis Botha in 1902 that it was better to accept an honorable peace while Afrikaner forces were still relatively strong.

Throughout his life, he was committed to Botha's ideals of reconciliation between English- and Afrikaans-speaking whites. In Botha's first Transvaal government of 1907, he became Colonial Secretary and Minister for Education. In 1908, he had a pivotal role in drawing up the constitution of the Union of South Africa, becoming Minister of the Interior, Mines, and Defense in 1910, exchanging the first two portfolios for Finance in 1912. As Botha's deputy he supported the invasion of German South-West Africa (Namibia) during World War I, which he led as second-in-command. In 1916, he accepted a British request for help in the struggling campaign in East Africa, and was appointed a Lieutenant-General in the British Army. He represented South Africa at the Imperial Conference of 1917, and was persuaded by David Lloyd George to stay in London and join the British War Cabinet. He set up the Royal Air Force as an independent service, became involved in the British domestic policies (such as persuading Welsh miners not to go on strike), and undertook countless diplomatic missions. He influenced the establishment of the League of Nations, and took part in the Paris Peace Conference.

Weary and sick of honors bestowed upon him by the British, he retired to South Africa, only to be made Prime Minister on Botha's death a few days later (27 August 1919). His conciliatory attitude towards the Unionists who favored close ties with Britain continued to anger the Afrikaners, while his suppression of the geenral strike in the gold mines of 1922 triggered the opposition ot the South African Labor Party. Meanwhile, his suppression of the millenarian Black peasant Israelite movement in Bulbek in 1921 showed his willingness to use force against the last remnants of rural black resistance to colonialism. In opposition, he was hostile to J.B.M. Hertzog's nationalist policies which he feared would alienate the English-speaking population. Under the influence of the Great Depression, he became Minister of Justice and Deputy Prime Minister under Hertzog in 1933.

While less of a segregationist than Hertzog, he accepted the 1936 racial laws (which formed the basis of the introduction of apartheid in 1948), satisfied that he had secured a good compromise. He broke with Hertzog when the latter opposed South Africa's entry into World War II and was defeated in Parliament. Despite continuing Afrikaner opposition he committed troops to the British war effort. In 1945, he took part in the establishment of the United Nations in San Francisco, successfully drawing up a preamble to the charter enshrining fundamental human rights. However, he was subsequently shaken by the UN's hostility to South Africa's racial policies and its desire to annex South-West Africa.

Accepting that an industrializing South Africa needed a skilled labor force, he improved the rights of Indians in Natal, invested in the education of blacks, and relaxed the controls over black urbanization. These measures were met by general hostility, however, and in 1948 he unexpectedly lost the elections to Malan. The most internationally respected South African statesman before F.W. de Klerk, at home his intellect became a burden as he failed to develop a "common touch", while never fully appreciating the potential of Afrikaner nationalism on the one hand, and African grievances against segregation on the other. He died in 1950.